Interview: Lost's Yunjin Kim

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The actress talks about season 3, flashbacks, and who might be the father of Sun's baby.

By Eric Goldman

On Lost, Yunjin Kim's character, Sun, has gone through many changes, or at the very least, the audience perception of the character certainly has changed. When first introduced, she seemed like a passive wife to an angry husband, Jin (Daniel Dae Kim), but the revelation that she secretly spoke English opened the door to many new storylines for Sun. And the flashbacks we've seen of Sun and Jin's life before they crashed on the island have radically altered how we see them, as we've learned many things, including the fact that Sun was having an affair.

Recently, IGN was among a group of journalists who spoke to Yunjin Kim, to get her thoughts on her character, who we now know is pregnant, and the much talked about series on which she stars.

Q: Do you and the cast ever sit around and discuss theories on what's going on regarding the show's mysteries?

Yunjin Kim: We used to, like crazy, in the first season. And then the second season, we just gave up, because everything we came up with, it was completely wrong.

Q: When you're in the middle of a scene, like when you see the foot of the statue, do you go to the writers and say, "Alright, what the hell is this?"

Yunjin Kim: You know, we gave up on that too, because they won't tell us! You don't know how many phone calls I made to each producer, trying to find out who the baby's father is! I still don't know. That's how kept [secret] all that information is. All that information is really kept from the actors, and I think it's a good thing. Because I'm a terrible liar, and it would show in my face right away.

Q: Since you don't know what they're going to reveal ahead of time, it must be pretty interesting for you when you film a flashback episode for your character.

Yunjin Kim: Uh huh! "Well, if I had known this, I would have done something very different, like a year ago." That's the little tiny regrets I feel once in awhile. It's like, "Oh, if I knew this first season, that scene would be a lot different&#Array;" How I would have acted it, you know?

Yunjin Kim on Lost

Q: Do you think that it's possible that the producers don't know what the heck is going on?

Yunjin Kim: No, I think they know how they want to end the whole series. I think they have the final destination mapped out. As far as how many stops they need to make along the way, we don't know exactly how long we need to be on air, and that's one of the things that [Executive Producer] Damon Lindelof was talking to [ABC President] Steve McPherson about; you know, they need to map out a full story, because there's so many characters involved and [they're] so weaved in together. And so in that sense, I think they know the final destination, but how they're gonna get there will change.

Q: Did it surprise you how quickly the show exploded, as far as its success, when it came on?

Yunjin Kim: I had a good feeling. As soon as I read the script, I knew that it was either going to be the best show or the worst ever. Like, "You're on that weird show! On the island&#Array; a Fantasy Island type of thing." It was either going to be really good, or really bad.

Q: When did you move here from Korea?

Yunjin Kim: Well, I grew up here. I grew up in New York. I just went back to work [in Korea] as an actress for six years, before coming out here.

Q: Has Lost aired in Korea yet?

Yunjin Kim: Oh yeah. The first time for an American television show to get picked up right away, because I was in it and Daniel was in it too.

Q: What's the reaction been like there?

Yunjin Kim: They love the fact that there are two series regular characters on an American television show [that are Korean]. I mean stuff like this has never happened before, where you get 40% [of an episode] in a different language. And for that to be Korean, is pretty amazing. So that being the case, they love it. They love to watch, and they write [letters] and support the show. They're just all over it.

Q: Did you know Sun could speak English when you shot the pilot?

Yunjin Kim: Yeah. I knew. That was like the only thing I got out of the producers in the beginning. Only because they wrote the character around me. They were talking to me a lot about the details of what it means to be a Korean woman nowadays. And they wanted to make her believable and they wanted her to serve a purpose, but at the beginning there was a lot of conversation about how we were going to approach this character. And that's one of the things I knew from day one.